Chapter 10: International Child Custody and Abduction Cases

This chapter will familiarize judges in the U.S. with the state and federal law applicable to international child custody, visitation and abduction disputes. These laws are UCCJA s? 23, the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (Hague Convention), and the International Child Abduction Remedies Act (ICARA). When a custody order from a foreign country is presented for recognition and enforcement, UCCJA § 23 controls. If notice and opportunity to be heard were given to all affected persons, state courts are to enforce foreign custody decrees. When a petition is filed seeking the prompt return of a child to another country based on allegations that the child's removal or retention was wrongful, the Hague Convention and ICARA govern. If the child's removal or retention is wrongful within the meaning of the Convention, and no exceptions to return are proved, a court in the U.S. must order the child's return forthwith. A return order is not a decision on the merits of custody.     

Chapter 8: Enforcing Child Custody Determinations under the UCCJA and the PKPA

This chapter explains the duties to enforce child custody determinations made by another state consistently with the UCCJA and PKPA. (Enforcement of foreign custody decrees is the subject of Chapter 10).     

Chapter 7: Drafting the Custody Order

This chapter outlines provisions that should be included in custody orders to aid interstate enforcement. When there is risk of child abduction, the court should include preventive measures in the custody order. This chapter also helps judges identify families at risk for child abduction, and suggests appropriate safeguards to put in the order.     

Chapter 9: Handling Interstate Child Custody Cases Involving Adoption,Parents in the Military,and Domestic Violence

This chapter suggests approaches for handling the complex jurisdictional issues that arise in interstate child custody cases involving adoptions, parents in the military, and domestic violence.     

Custody and Visitation in Families With Three (or More) Parents

New technological and legal developments have enabled the formation of three‐parent families. Now that these families have arrived, families—and family law—must adapt to allocate responsibilities among the responsible adults.     

High Conflict Divorce,Violence, and Abuse: Implications for Custody and Visitation Decisions

Today, judges are faced with the daunting task of determining the best interests of the child and making appropriate custody awards to that end. The best interests of children becomes a critical question when domestic violence is involved; yet, determining what constitutes domestic violence is often debated. Research is often divided on what constitutes domestic violence. One body of research focuses on conflict, another focuses on domestic violence. What the first group identifies as intense emotional distress and disagreement, the other identifies as abuse. Judges making custody determinations in such cases are faced with the difficult challenge of distinguishing between a divorce with “high conflict” and a domestic violence case with ongoing abuse. This article will summarize the legal, philosophical, and historical understandings of the “high conflict” family and its potential impact on children. It will also provide practical judicial guidelines for making the important distinction between high conflict and domestic violence and subsequently crafting appropriate and safe child custody awards.     

Chapter 5: Jurisdiction to Make an Initial Custody Determination

This chapter explains the state and federal statutory scheme for the existence and exercise of jurisdiction to make an initial child custody determination. Grounds for declining jurisdiction are also discussed, including simultaneous proceedings pending in another state, inconvenient forum and “clean hands” considerations, and the federal preference for “home state” jurisdiction. The next chapter examines jurisdiction to modify a child custody determination.     

Children Exposed to Domestic Violence: Making Trauma‐Informed Custody and Visitation Decisions

This article explores the risks for young children and the challenges for courts that emerge when parents who are victims or perpetrators of intimate partner violence seek court decisions on child visitation or custody matters. We focus particularly on children age five and younger, a group that is disproportionately represented in families affected by intimate partner violence, and especially vulnerable to its traumatic impact. We examine the literature on children's response to violence between their parents and the literature on parental alienation, a counter‐charge that may arise when one parent alleges violence as a reason to limit the other parent's access to the children. We look at challenges faced by both mental health professionals and courts involved in custody determinations and make policy recommendations to help courts make trauma‐informed decisions that best serve children.     

Comment on Parkinson and Cashmore's (2015) Research and Proposal for Reforming Child Custody Relocation Law: Child Custody Evaluator and Psychological Perspecitve

Parkinson and Cashmore ( 2015 ) described their innovative, qualitative, and longitudinal research program on the experience of Australian families involved in relocation family law litigation. This constructive comment discusses the value and limitations of their main findings. Parkinson and Cashmore's approach is contrasted with the excellent quantitative research on the effects of residential mobility on children of divorce. The author disagrees with Parkinson and Cashmore's position of opposing the use of relocation factors in statute and/or case law so as to not hinder the exercise of judicial discretion any further, but agrees with their integration of the least detrimental alternative concept into a relocation analysis.     

Evaluating the Probative Value of Child Custody Evaluations

It has previously been argued that a competent forensic work product is defined, in part, by the evaluator's use of conventional forensic methods and procedures applied to child custody evaluations (Gould, 1998) and that the more judges and other legal professionals understand about forensic methods and procedures, the better they are able to critically weigh the substance and merit of a child custody evaluation (Gould & Bell, 2000). These forensic methods and procedures have their foundation in the behavioral sciences and are characteristic of competent and comprehensive forensic evaluations conducted for other legal purposes. In this paper, we provide a more detailed model for critiquing the forensic competence of a child custody report. Such a model better assists courts and lawyers in understanding how to assess the substance and admissibility of custody reports.